


to sleep, perchance to dream (or: nightmares)

by eldritchbee



Series: Goretober 2020 [14]
Category: IT - Stephen King
Genre: Dreams and Nightmares, Gen, Goretober, Goretober 2020, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Terminal Illnesses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-31
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-03-08 20:02:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 695
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27292396
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eldritchbee/pseuds/eldritchbee
Summary: They have to, because the monster also sleeps, and the monster also dreams, and what the monster dreams of is IT's meals. He thinks he’s the only living victim of IT left in Derry now. He’s connected to IT by a battle scar that bonded him to the others as well, bound them to their childhood warground.---Mike Hanlon before IT returns. Book canon but also not exactly compliant.For Goretober 2020 (prompt #29 - nightmare)
Relationships: Bill Denbrough & Mike Hanlon
Series: Goretober 2020 [14]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1950091
Kudos: 2





	to sleep, perchance to dream (or: nightmares)

**Author's Note:**

> It's been like 10 years since I've read the book or seen the Tim Curry movies and I have not watched the newest movies yet, so it's playing very loosely with book canon.
> 
> Top quote and title from Hamlet.

_"whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer  
_ _the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,  
_ _or to take arms against a sea of troubles  
_ _and by opposing, end them"_

* * *

He hadn’t slept well since he was a child, the result of being the watcher on the wall of Derry, waiting for the town to once again show its teeth. When everyone else slowly left, he stayed behind. _Someone has to_ , he’d told Bill at his father’s funeral, when all those papers, pictures, and stories were officially passed down. _Or we’ll all forget, and IT’ll just swallow Derry all over again._

Part of him wished he hadn’t. A part of him that wakes in bed or over his desk in the library with a start, with tears streaming down his face. There were nightmares, numerous ones - some he forgot immediately, others that followed him throughout his day. He’d woken up paralyzed before, and envisioned Henry Bowers sitting on his chest with his switchblade, envisioned a thousand crows resting and staring straight at him, envisioned a clown preparing to cut him open and smash what was inside. 

(“You kn-know I-I won-won’t for ge-get, Mike. Ne-ne-ne-” his stutter was worse when he tried to hold back tears and fears. Back then, Mike had clapped a hand on Bill’s shoulder and drew him into an embrace. _I’m not going to let you make promises you can’t keep_ , he never says it aloud, but the feeling is there. _But, I won’t allow you to forget for very long._ )

They forget, of course they do. And when they do, he feels it.

It makes him feel weaker, like being covered with blankets and being unable to fight his way out. They forget, and he feels like he’s taken on all their memories afterwards, held them in his mind until when they would need them most.

(He has his father’s pictures, his father’s notes, his father’s research and adds and adds and cross references and crosses out. He has stories spoken to him, words in a voice he _is_ starting to forget, starts to forget the day his father dies. But, part of him wishes he’d asked Bill to stay, so he wouldn’t be so very alone here. Ben and Bill could help him with his research, as three they would cover more ground. But, he’s not so certain they could handle decades here without it breaking them down. He, like his father before him, had seen the form hatred could take younger than any of the others. He was forced from a younger age than they to be on the lookout not for monsters under the bed or in the house, but for the monsters outside, for _Derry_ itself. 

Unlike them.

He’s the only one who could survive being trapped here until IT came back.)

Instead of his nightmares lessening into adulthood, they only get worse. Only grow all the more numerous. 

Of course they do.

They have to, because the monster also sleeps, and the monster also dreams, and what the monster dreams of is IT's meals. He thinks he’s the only living victim of IT left in Derry now. He’s connected to IT by a battle scar that bonded him to the others as well, bound them to their childhood warground. 

But they cover it up for the time being.

And so, when IT sleeps, Mike Hanlon dreams -

\- he’s stuck in a fire, he’s a child again searching for Easter eggs as an explosion swallows him up, there’s an axe flying towards his face, he floats lifelessly down a stream, hysterical laughter, a tumor grows in his lungs unknown until one day he just drops to the floor unable to breathe, he pulls the meat from a living Mr. Chips and almost eats it himself, Henry Bowers, _he is George Denbrough, sticking his hand down the sewer gate and being dragged into the dark_ -

the truth is this:

Mike Hanlon feels IT wake a week before Adrian Mellon’s death. Feels it because for once, for _once_ , his nights are dreamless, and it sows in him a sense of terror he hasn’t felt in years.

The calm before the storm.


End file.
